Driving Innovation for Tech Startups with Nearshore

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Nearshore Nexus conference – a terrific event that I look forward to attending again next year. At the conference I presented a session with a good friend of mine, Guto Araujo, Founder & CEO of Carousl Labs, about an issue that we at Ci&T have recently been seeking to address: the challenges tech startups face in developing and delivering disruptive products to market quickly, without the benefit of a huge development team. Often in nearshore the focus is on attracting and working with big, global companies on designing web or mobile applications that can either contribute to current product lines or create new revenue streams.

But there’s also a universe of small, innovative startups with creative ideas for products that can truly disrupt the market, and we are extending our client portfolio to include these emerging companies.  In many cases, these companies simply don’t have the resources to see these projects through to delivery or can’t afford to transfer the resources from products that already drive value.  So products can be delayed as companies struggle to hire the right people to bring the idea to fruition, while the competition gets a leg up.

These are the challenges we’re helping these companies’ address. Though the scope of the projects doesn’t often compare with some of the larger ones we work on, thus far our work has generated a high level of satisfaction for the clients and, in turn, for us as well.  While there’s considerable value to be gained from adding a Fortune 500 logo to our client list (and website), it can be equally satisfying to help a smaller company deliver an innovative product that catalyzes real change in the market.

As we’ve seen in recent years, many of the most disruptive technology concepts we now consider essential weren’t introduced by the big tech behemoths – they were developed by small companies with meager development teams that just had a really cool idea.  And they ended up changing the world (Facebook, anyone?). That’s the kind of spirit we’re proud to be a part of.